Tilling an old project in spring, ready for a new crop of creative work in summer.

I'll be honest I think I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to pun the Blog title so I can wittily introduce this new project.

A few years back Six Lips Theatre produced a new play written by Roxanna Klimaszewska called Tilling. The show explored how a recent widow was coming to terms with her solitary future after recent bereavement.

We had an amazing time producing this show in 2011 with Saint Nicholas's Field Eco Centre as part of International Women's Week, but we left the project with a great sense that the project had scope and potential to develop further and that it's issues were always socially relevant. 

Not only is it exciting to be reworking this project, it also marks the beginning of a new collaboration and association with an exciting up and coming dramaturg: Miss Lizzy Whynes.

We will be updating you with creative outcomes of our workshops over the rehearsal process. Here is some creative writing from today. 

This was constructed using case studies and using set prepositions as stimulus. The theme was Loneliness:

I am resigned to acceptance now. I was frantic at first, trying to keep occupied, and almost stimulated by my freedom, my lack of rules. But now I live mostly in my mind; memories, conversations (with myself and imaginary). My mind has become my playground, my work place, my home.

The same scenery over again. I sound like a broken record and I feel like I'm sat on one. I try and break ritual but to what end? To try and appear less pathetic. To who? Who is watching and who cares? I feel better in a routine, it suits me and I feel daily satisfaction from it, even if it does make me seem tedious.

Cleaning products are the most pungent smell in my house. Now I have all the time in the world to clean, I realise how filthy I was before. How quickly dirt accumulates and how regularly things need attention. Since my irreversible revelation of a higher level of hygiene and true cleanliness , I feel a gnawing necessity to maintain these new standards. Some days I avoid cooking or eating to avoid sullying my puritanical work.

I don't really dabble in emotional affairs any more, so my feelings are restricted to small outcomes of the domestic day to day. I couldn't tell you how I 'feel' any more.

I am becoming something I was always a afraid of being when I got to this age, but I think this was an innocent, inexperienced view point. Looking at old age as a young person, full of life, drama and distractions, this sort of life seems repetitive, boring, unstimulating, unchallenging. I suppose it is, but I am here and I never thought I'd let this happen to me. I have let this happen to me, so I assume, it's inevitable.